|Publication number||US7047292 B1|
|Application number||US 09/317,746|
|Publication date||May 16, 2006|
|Filing date||May 24, 1999|
|Priority date||May 24, 1999|
|Also published as||US7519598, US20060161519|
|Publication number||09317746, 317746, US 7047292 B1, US 7047292B1, US-B1-7047292, US7047292 B1, US7047292B1|
|Inventors||Robert L. Stewart, Ramanathan R. Kavasseri, Sandra C. Durham|
|Original Assignee||Cisco Technology, Inc.|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (21), Non-Patent Citations (1), Referenced by (16), Classifications (13), Legal Events (3)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
A computer network is a group of interconnected nodes communicating with one another. The interconnected nodes are devices such as, computers, routers, bridges and switches. In a computer network in which all the nodes are local, for example, in the same building, a node can be managed by physically managing and controlling the node.
However, in computer networks in which there are non-local nodes, remote managing and controlling of nodes is necessary. To provide remote management and control of nodes, a network manager is provided in one or more nodes in the computer network. The network manager includes one or more network management applications. The nodes managed and controlled by the network management applications are called managed elements.
A managed element includes managed objects. A managed object is any object for which information is stored in the managed element. For example, the managed object may be text identifying the manufacturer of the managed element or a list of all nodes connected to the managed element. The managed element stores information for the managed object in a Managed Information Base (“MIB”), and makes it available to the network manager application.
The network management application may request information for a managed object stored in the managed element's MIB, using a network management protocol to communicate the request to the managed element. Standard network management protocols, such as the Simple Network Management Protocol (“SNMP”) described in the Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”) Request For Comments (“RFC”) standard Numbers 1901–1908 and 2271–2275, define a protocol for transferring information for managed objects between a network manager and a managed element.
Having retrieved the information for the managed object, the network management application may display the retrieved information on a monitor, record it for later analysis, or use it for automated management. The managed objects retrieved and displayed by a network management applications may include, for example, a list of all discovered devices in the computer network, the status of any discovered devices or the number of data packets forwarded by the managed element.
A request for retrieval of one or more managed objects from a managed element is generated by the network management application in the management station. The request for retrieval of one or more managed objects requires a message to be sent from the management station to the managed element. Each time a selected managed object is to be retrieved, a new message is required. Therefore, managing a managed object in the managed element may require continuously requesting information from the managed object. For example, to manage the performance of the computer network, the network management application may have to periodically request that the managed element return the value of a counter.
The number of requests for information from managed objects in the managed element directly affects the performance of the managed element. While the managed element is providing requested information from the managed object, data transfer through the managed element is reduced.
Therefore, what is needed is a method for prioritizing requests from computer network management applications.
The present invention relates to prioritizing network management requests sent by a management station to a managed element. A priority value is assigned to the network management request and the network management request is scheduled by the managed element dependent on the assigned priority value.
The priority value may be assigned to the network management request by the managed element. The managed element assigns the priority value by adding a priority value to an authentication group, including user identification values in an authentication table or by adding a priority value to a source identification in a source identification table. The network management request is scheduled by the managed element by extracting the user or source identification values from the network management request and using the extracted identification to index the corresponding table.
The priority value may be assigned by the management station. The management station assigns a priority value to each network management request before sending the network management request to the managed element. The priority value is extracted by the network management element and the managed element schedules the network management request dependent on the extracted priority value.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of preferred embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which like reference characters refer to the same parts throughout the different views. The drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon illustrating the principles of the invention.
A network management protocol defines the protocol for communications between the management station 102 and the managed element 104 over the network 100. In the embodiment shown, the network management protocol used is the Simple Network Management Protocol (“SNMP”) described in Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”) Request For Comments (“RFC”) 1901–1908 and 2271–2275.
Network management information is stored in managed objects in the managed element's Managed Information Base (“MIB”) 112. A managed object is information stored in a predefined format in the managed element. Managed objects may be requested by the management station. For example, the managed object may be text identifying the managed element's physical network interface or text identifying the manufacturer of the managed element.
MIBs may be standard or private. In a standard MIB the definitions of the managed objects in the MIB have been approved by a standards organization, for example, the managed objects defined for the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (“ATM”) in IETF RFC Number 1695. A private MIB contains either non-standard definitions for managed objects in a management element or extensions to standard definitions of managed objects.
The management station 102 includes network management applications 106 and the management station's Management Information Base (“MIB”) 108. The management applications 106 manage and control managed objects (not shown) stored in the managed element's MIB 112. The management station 102 observes or controls managed objects in the managed element 104 by sending a SNMP message 300 to read or write the information.
The managed element 104 includes the managed element's MIB 112 and an agent 110. The agent 110 is a processing entity to which a SNMP message 300 from the management station 102 is sent. The agent 110 interprets the contents of the SNMP message 300, performs the operation requested in the contents of the SNMP message 300 and returns a SNMP message 300 to the management station 102. The agent 110, dependent on the contents of the SNMP message, either extracts the requested information from the managed object or modifies the managed object stored in the managed element's MIB 112. If the information is to be returned to the network management application 106, the agent 110 sends an SNMP message 300 containing the requested information over the network 100 to the management station 102. The management station 102 and the managed element 104 include software instructions stored in bits in memory (not shown). The software instructions are grouped into software routines. The software routines perform operations in the management station 102 and the managed element 104.
As shown in
The SNMP interface 200 creates an SNMP message 300 requesting information from the managed object. The format of the SNMP message 300 is described in conjunction with
Having created the SNMP message 300 the SNMP interface 200 forwards the SNMP message 300 to the network layers 204. As is well known in the art, before sending the SNMP message 300 over the network the SNMP message 300 is forwarded to a transport layer, such as User Datagram Protocol (“UDP”). The transport layer processes the SNMP message 300 into UDP packets and forwards the packets to the network layer.
The network layer includes the IP protocol. The IP protocol adds an IP address for the destination node to each packet. The size of the IP address added is dependent on the version of the IP protocol used. Version 4 of the IP protocol (“Pv4”) adds a 32 bit IP address to each packet. Version 6 of the IP protocol (“IPv6”), adds a 128 bit IP address to each packet. The network layer forwards the packets including IP addresses to the Link layer. The Link layer sends the packets including the IP addresses, over the physical medium through the management station's network physical interface 114.
The format of the SNMP message wrapper 302 is dependent on the version of SNMP implemented in the management station 102 (
The message wrapper for SNMPv3 includes a user identification. The user identification in the SNMP message wrapper 302 may be used for user authentication by the managed element 104(
SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c message wrappers 302 may include a community name. The use of a community name in the SNMP message wrapper 302 is described in the Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”) Request For Comments (“RFC”) 1902 published on the Internet in January 1996 and incorporated herein by reference. A community name may be assigned to each user or group of users of the management station and used for identification to determine if the user is allowed access to the information from a managed object stored in a managed element 104 (
A user is assigned to a community identification and each community identification is assigned a priority. For example, in the first row 418, community identification #1 is assigned to user #1 and user #4 and is assigned a priority of 3.
In step 500 the agent 110 waits for an SNMP message 300 from the management station 102. After receiving an SNMP message 300, in step 502, the identification is extracted from the SNMP message wrapper 302(
In step 504, using the identification extracted from the SNMP message 300 the agent determines the priority of the SNMP message 300 from the LCD (
In step 506, the agent 110 (
In step 508, if the priority of the SNMP message 300 is higher than the priority of SNMP messages 300 on an active task queue (not shown) currently being processed by the agent 110(
In an alternative embodiment, the priority of the SNMP message 300 may be added directly to the SNMP message 300 by the SNMP layer 200(
Using this method a priority value is added to an SNMP message 300 in the SNMP layer 200 (
As shown in
In step 608, the agent 110(
In step 606, the agent 110 (
Adding a priority field to the contents of the network management request is not limited to SNMP. A priority field may also be added to network management requests in other network management protocols, such as DECnet, the Common Management Information Interface (“CMIP”) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture/Internet Inter-Object Request Broker Protocol (“CORBA/IIOP”).
The configuration file is stored in the managed element's MIB 112 (
The network management request is either placed at the front of the queue of active tasks (not shown), or placed on a pending task queue (not shown) dependent on the priority of the network management request. Using this method urgent network management requests are processed before low priority network management requests and other tasks.
This embodiment of the invention is applicable to any network management protocol such as, DECnet, the Common Management Information Interface (“CMIP”) and Common Object Request Broker Architecture/Internet Inter-Object Request Broker Protocol (“CORBA/IIOP”).
It will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that methods involved in the present invention may be embodied in a computer program product that includes a computer usable medium. For example, such a computer usable medium can consist of a read only memory device, such as a hard drive device or a computer diskette, having computer readable program code stored thereon.
While this invention has been particularly shown and described with references to preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
|Cited Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US5448731 *||Nov 20, 1990||Sep 5, 1995||International Business Machines Corporation||Method and apparatus for controlling the deferred execution of user requests in a data processing system|
|US5617541 *||Dec 21, 1994||Apr 1, 1997||International Computer Science Institute||System for packetizing data encoded corresponding to priority levels where reconstructed data corresponds to fractionalized priority level and received fractionalized packets|
|US5623603 *||Nov 2, 1994||Apr 22, 1997||Fls Acquistion Corporation||Method of transferring data at adjustable levels of priorities to provide optimum response to user demands|
|US5689642 *||Nov 22, 1995||Nov 18, 1997||Xerox Corporation||Recipient prioritized communication channel profiles|
|US5717604 *||May 25, 1995||Feb 10, 1998||Wiggins; Christopher||Network monitoring system for tracking, billing and recovering licenses|
|US5748190 *||Sep 5, 1995||May 5, 1998||Wisevision As||Presentation system for individual personal computers in a personal computer network|
|US5802146 *||Nov 22, 1995||Sep 1, 1998||Bell Atlantic Network Services, Inc.||Maintenance operations console for an advanced intelligent network|
|US5870558 *||Dec 31, 1996||Feb 9, 1999||Mciworldcom, Inc.||Intranet graphical user interface for SONET network management|
|US5999978 *||Oct 31, 1997||Dec 7, 1999||Sun Microsystems, Inc.||Distributed system and method for controlling access to network resources and event notifications|
|US6012095 *||Nov 18, 1997||Jan 4, 2000||Hewlett-Packard Company||Generic notification framework system and method for enhancing operation of a management station on a network|
|US6032183 *||Aug 5, 1997||Feb 29, 2000||International Business Machines Corporation||System and method for maintaining tables in an SNMP agent|
|US6076107 *||Jan 10, 1997||Jun 13, 2000||International Business Machines Corporation||Method for reducing SNMP instrumentation message flows|
|US6085238 *||Apr 22, 1997||Jul 4, 2000||Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.||Virtual LAN system|
|US6101539 *||Oct 2, 1998||Aug 8, 2000||Kennelly; Richard J.||Dynamic presentation of management objectives based on administrator privileges|
|US6119156 *||Apr 27, 1998||Sep 12, 2000||Xerox Corporation||Locking mechanism for network-managed agents in a digital printing system|
|US6219697 *||May 2, 1997||Apr 17, 2001||3Com Corporation||Method and apparatus for operating the internet protocol over a high-speed serial bus|
|US6263361 *||Nov 19, 1998||Jul 17, 2001||Ncr Corporation||Method for calculating capacity measurements for an internet web site|
|US6321266 *||Jun 4, 1996||Nov 20, 2001||Canon Kabushiki Kaisha||Input/output apparatus connected to a plurality of host computers via a network|
|US6333789 *||Sep 10, 1998||Dec 25, 2001||Seiko Epson Corporation||Printing system, method and apparatus for processing a plurality of types of information different in priority|
|US6434607 *||Jun 19, 1998||Aug 13, 2002||International Business Machines Corporation||Web server providing role-based multi-level security|
|JPH1040044A *||Title not available|
|1||Network Working Group, "A Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)," [online] May 1990 [retrieved Sep. 20, 2004] Retrieved from the Internet <URL:http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1157.txt?number=1157>.|
|Citing Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US7373411 *||Feb 1, 2002||May 13, 2008||Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.||Configuration information generation system and method|
|US7689678||Mar 30, 2010||Extreme Networks||Method and apparatus for restoring the configuration of a network device|
|US7783733 *||Apr 26, 2002||Aug 24, 2010||Extreme Networks, Inc.||Method and apparatus for dynamic configuration management|
|US7937433 *||Sep 23, 2003||May 3, 2011||Embarq Holdings Company, Llc||Queuing connector to promote message servicing|
|US8275865 *||Feb 5, 2004||Sep 25, 2012||International Business Machines Corporation||Methods, systems and computer program products for selecting among alert conditions for resource management systems|
|US8285900 *||Feb 17, 2009||Oct 9, 2012||The Board Of Regents Of The University Of Texas System||Method and apparatus for congestion-aware routing in a computer interconnection network|
|US8561076 *||Jun 30, 2004||Oct 15, 2013||Emc Corporation||Prioritization and queuing of media requests|
|US8694704||Sep 13, 2012||Apr 8, 2014||Board Of Regents, University Of Texas Systems||Method and apparatus for congestion-aware routing in a computer interconnection network|
|US20030005105 *||May 30, 2002||Jan 2, 2003||Anne Robb||Method and apparatus for a common management software systems|
|US20030149782 *||Feb 1, 2002||Aug 7, 2003||Robinson Mike C.||Configuration information generation system and method|
|US20030204578 *||Apr 26, 2002||Oct 30, 2003||Michael Yip||Method and apparatus for restoring the configuration of a network device|
|US20030236838 *||Apr 9, 2002||Dec 25, 2003||Ouchi Norman Ken||Shared and private node workflow system|
|US20040158615 *||Feb 12, 2003||Aug 12, 2004||Keller Matthew Craig||Priority web browsing|
|US20050198640 *||Feb 5, 2004||Sep 8, 2005||Uthe Robert T.||Methods, systems and computer program products for selecting among alert conditions for resource management systems|
|US20080127184 *||Nov 28, 2006||May 29, 2008||Stefan Hofmann||Method and Apparatus for Facilitating Communication Between a Managed System and Management Systems|
|US20100211718 *||Feb 17, 2009||Aug 19, 2010||Paul Gratz||Method and apparatus for congestion-aware routing in a computer interconnection network|
|U.S. Classification||709/224, 709/249, 709/240, 709/225, 709/226|
|Cooperative Classification||Y10S707/99937, H04L41/0213, Y10S707/99932, Y10S707/99938, Y10S707/99939, Y10S707/99933|
|Aug 18, 1999||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: CISCO TECHNOLOGY, INC., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:STEWART, ROBERT L.;KAVASSERI, RAMANATHAN R.;DURHAM, SANDRA C.;REEL/FRAME:010170/0571;SIGNING DATES FROM 19990806 TO 19990811
|Sep 28, 2009||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4
|Nov 18, 2013||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 8